Remember when Iran held American hostages for 444 days, when President Jimmy Carter (another weak Democratic president) was in office?

That ended the day Reagan was sworn in as president in 1981.

All the hostages were released that day.

The Iranians knew Reagan meant business!

When Reagan was in office, nations feared and respected us.

If someone like Reagan were in office today, you wouldn't see Vladimir Putin taking over Crimea, North Korea firing off missiles or Syria challenging Barack Obama's "red line."

We need to select a strong leader who can resurrect us from this liberal quagmire.

Get rid of these sissy Democrats and make America No. 1 again!

— Tony Novak, Arlington Heights

Worst presidents

Having been considered our worst modern-day president, I can only imagine how happy Jimmy Carter must be now.

— Tom Van Horn, Morris

Waste of money

Who needs a library honoring a president who has brought us all down?

Our state is in a dire financial situation and Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan is offering to spend $100 million for a presidential library and museum?

There are so many more worthy projects for this money.

Any attempt to spend such money so foolishly should be put to the people for a vote. It is time for we, the people, to wake up before it is too late.

— Nancy Dancy, Franklin Park

Spending your money

How much is a billion?

Politicians throw that figure around like horseshoes at a holiday picnic.

You should be concerned though.

It's your tax dollars they are spending, or, in many cases, misspending.

Some of the amounts of money kicked around by our elected officials are in the several billions of dollars.

And all of it is your tax dollars.

Think about it.

It does make a big difference whom you vote for.

It's your money.

It's your vote.

— E. Kuffel, Niles

Republican rhetoric

I find the Republicans' responses to international crises to be annoying, delusional and even dangerous to our national interests and security.

The Ukrainian crisis was hardly a day old when Republicans accused the president of being weak and ineffective.

This is inaccurate and, in the midst of a crisis, you don't create divisiveness within our country, which would hurt the U.S. in dealing with the problem that was not of our making.

The danger with Republican rhetoric in all of the international crises that have happened in the last six-and-a-half years is they are used to bombastic actions by our government: Shoot first; ask questions later.

This is like a cartoon or comic book, with the U.S. as Superman to the rescue.

Most international crises are caused by decades and centuries of tribal, religious and territorial conflicts. They cannot be solved easily or quickly.

Deliberate negotiations and working together with our allies and proposing sanctions are very important first steps. We don't have the money or the troops to jump into military actions everywhere without other steps being taken first.

— Carole Gallotta, Lyons

Readers' views

Being a lifetime subscriber to the Chicago Tribune, I truly enjoy reading your Voice of the People section. A regular contributor, Mel Novit, expresses his articulate opinions on real lifetime issues and current events that truly hit home.

To reduce carbon emissions and combat global warming, President Barack Obama and the Democrats have, among many other things, shut down coal mines, curtailed oil and gas drilling, littered our landscape with bird-killing wind turbines and pumped hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars into unworkable "green" industries, many of which went belly up.

This policy was an unmitigated success!

Global warming was defeated.

This winter was one of the coldest on record.

Now it looks like it's time to start pumping more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to put our climate back in sync and warm up our weather to normal conditions.

— Donald Froelich, Mount Prospect

Pension solution

A reader wrote in a March 13 letter to the editor, "You need to have a plan to fix the budget and reform the pension mess that doesn't simply penalize the people who have paid into the retirement system," referring to our Illinois pension mess.

This is the Titanic version of the solution to our problems: State and city pensioners will not accept any changes to their current pensions even though they have elected those to office who caused the mess; these are the people rushing to the lifeboats.

We the taxpayers will be stuck going down with the Titanic, unable to move since no one will buy our houses with the property tax hikes required.